Last year I read in the Bexley New Shopper about a bitter man who, here on Christmas Eve, pharm and in a drunken moment of madness, adiposity broke into his estranged wife’s house. After drinking the Brandy and eating the mince pies which had been left out for Santa he fell asleep under the tree. Upon his discovery on Christmas Morn the police were called and he was taken away and sectioned under the mental health act. His actions were ill-advised and there was,no doubt, a better way of rekindling the romance of Christmas. There again this could simply be a song about a very naughty dog. – Jack Hayter

Next up we have two collaborations from Alex Mayor aka Alexander’s Festival Hall, firstly with acclaimed writer Travis Elborough.

This song was a joint project between Alexander’s Festival Hall and The Birthday Girl who plays and sings in the Vatican Cellars.She wanted to a Christmas song and we started channelling some unhappy-goths-attempt-to-find-the-reason-for-the-season type narratives at the beginning, but this fairly doomladen strumfest (Black snow at Xmas) was just too depressing to finish. However… we looped a little section of it and realised you could drop a more perky uptempo number about Santa being this slightly awful and untrustworthy uncle figure over the top. The Birthday Girl added a few choice morsels of Southern States American personal history to, ah, spice things up and the results is well… I guess give it a listen! – Alex

A 6 track 10" EP from Darren Hayman in a hand screenprinted sleeve. Comes with digital download code and Darren's choice of Fika: a bag of loose leaf lapsang souchong and a recipe for Julia's Christmas Cake.

Fika Recordings

Fika Recordings is a London based DIY record label. We started in February 2011 and have so far released 8 cassettes and 2 records - Darren Hayman's Christmas In Haworth 10" will be our third vinyl release.
Every Fika Recordings cassette or record is painstakingly handmade. We screenprint and customise our record sleeves and our cassette cases are lovingly printed, cut and folded by our fair hands. Each release comes with a digital download code and the artist's choice of Fika - a tea bag and a recipe for a cake of some sort.
We sell all our releases as cheaply as we possibly can; you can order one from our online store or from good record shops.

Darren Hayman

Darren Hayman’s solo career has so far produced 5 full length albums, a wonderful January Songs project (a new song and video written and recorded every day in January 2011 and put online day by day), collaborations in a bluegrass outfit (Hayman, Watkins, Trout & Lee), an exhibition and album about people and animals in space (Vostok 5) and appearances playing bass with Rotifer. He used to play in a band called Hefner.